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Guided Meditation: Rest and Playful Exploration

Good morning Sangha. Good morning, nice to see you all. In the chat forum, lovely to see the greetings from all over the place. Really beautiful. The weather reports, the warmth that you all share with each other—it's really meaningful. It's really meaningful to be here.

So we're right at the top of the hour, so I'm going to go ahead and start us in the meditation. Just introducing some playfulness, experimentation this morning. Notice whatever feelings are happening, whatever mood, whatever excitement or emotions are happening from engaging with each other. Or if you've just arrived and you're not seeing chat, notice where you're at. Just noticing the internal weather. The sense of familiarity being here, or of newness if it's new for you.

Find a comfortable posture. A balance of relaxation and alertness. Adjusting anything that needs to adjust for your comfort. You can be rocking back and forth in your seats, wherever you're sitting, and finding balance. An internal balance.

Allow any excess tension just to fade away on the out-breath. Attune to an overall sense of your body. Your body immersed in this moment, immersed in whatever weather is outside. Contact of skin on air, air on skin. And from the inside, the contact of breath. Gently, soothingly stretching the diaphragm, the belly. Perhaps movements moving the rib cage or chest ever so slightly.

Perhaps sensations in the nostrils or at the top of the lip. Feeling the warmth, the warmth of the breath within. And perhaps coolness as air becomes breath from the outside.

Take a moment to scan through the whole body, acknowledging in a friendly way possible whatever's there today. Perhaps areas of heaviness or lightness. Movement or stillness. Letting go. Invite a sweep through your whole body. Inviting a softening, the balance of relaxation and alertness.

Settle the attention on whatever object or anchor of attention is most comfortable for you. My instructions will be on breathing, mindfulness and breathing, for the most part. The invitation is to use what works for you, playing with it. Experiment.

Bring awareness to the forefront of experience. Allowing other concerns then and there to fade to the background. Noticing any soothing qualities or pleasure. Even just a sense of aliveness on the in-breath and out-breath. Resting.

Experimenting. Experimenting with how it feels to place the attention more firmly or more lightly on the sensations of breathing. Which brings more satisfaction?

Notice the differences between the beginning of the inhale and the fullness of the lungs at the top of the inhale. Noticing the release, the beginning of the exhale. Feeling all the way through the exhale to that letting go. That moment of stillness at the end of the exhale prior to the next natural allowing of an in-breath. Encouraging continuous contact of attention and breathing in an open, allowing, spacious kind of way.

Most of the remainder of this meditation will be in silence. The encouragement is to play with how you engage with the breath, the moment sensations, lightly to maximize a sense of immersion in this meditation. And when that sense of immersion emerges, to rest. Allow, ride the wave until it makes sense to bring a little bit of experimentation in again.

And for the last few minutes of this meditation, opening the awareness up to the overall flow of experience. Perhaps still maintaining contact with breathing, the body. Allowing the flow of sensations, mood or atmospherics of the heart and mind arising, flowing, and passing away. Mental phenomena, sound. Opening up and allowing a global sense, the overall inner processes. Stepping back.

Taking a moment to notice again the overall internal weather, sense of heart-mind. Especially observing any corners of experience that are pleasant, peaceful. Any good qualities that may have been cultivated. Perhaps patience or awareness, the touch of immersion, or stability.

And tuning into your heart. Setting the intention to share these benefits, this goodness, with those this life touches. Perhaps with an internal gesture of offering, wishing others well, as close and near, or far and wide as it feels right to send those wishes.

May the benefits of our practice here together be shared with all beings. May all beings be safe. May all beings be happy. May all beings be healthy. May they be peaceful and may they be free.

Thank you for the sincerity of your practice.

Dharmette: Spiritual Power (5 of 5) Interest and Experimentation

So good morning again, Sangha. Today the topic is interest and experimentation in practice. This is the fifth in a five-part series on a teaching of the Buddha. The bases, the steps or fundamentals to develop spiritual power and meditative success, are a list known as the Iddhipāda^[1]. And the Pali for interest and experimentation is Vīmaṃsā^[2], v-i-m-a-m-s-a.

Today I'll cover two main points about this and then briefly review how this quality of interest, exploration, or investigation, as it's sometimes called, fits in with the other bases: enthusiasm or desire, Viriya^[3] (energy or effort), or mind. And of course the two tripod legs that have been with each base all along, which are wholehearted engagement and collectiveness (immersion, concentration).

The two main points are to be a naturalist of the inner ecology of your body, heart, and mind in this moment, and second, that there's an art and a science, and the encouragement is to be curious, a kind of applied curiosity. To be experimental and to notice action and results, inputs and outputs.

But before I get into those points, first let's explore the range of meanings of this factor, kind of a word cloud as I've been doing. Some of the translations for Vīmaṃsā are experimentation, consideration—and as I say these, feel into how they land in your body, your heart, your mind, what associations they bring—investigation, discernment, close examination, active intelligence, empirical inquiry, applied curiosity, creative exploration, and receptive interest.

As with the ingredients of all the other bases, practicing with this interest and experimentation is on a continuum. It depends on the other conditions in the practice, in our lives, in any given session, in any given day. There's an active end, which is kind of like experimentation and close investigation, all the way through sort of a gentle creative exploration or applied curiosity, to a more receptive end, just this open allowing interest. Any and all of these can be appropriate in a given meditation session, and as the practice gains momentum at different points, whether it's over the course of years or on a long retreat, it tends to be wiser to move towards the more open and receptive end. At a certain point the practice kind of does us, you might have noticed this occasionally, where there's just this sense of coasting, right?

So in experimenting with experimentation, it's helpful as I mentioned earlier to observe your experience like a naturalist, like a scientist. I'm remembering an anecdote someone shared in a Dharma talk in the past year, I can't remember who. They were hiking, and on the hiking trail they ran across someone who was lying down on the earth and just closely examining this plant. As they encountered each other on the path, the hiker said hello and the scientist, the naturalist, just looked up with this expression of lit-up joy about the discovery they were making. That's part of the potential of this close observation, that it in itself can build a sense of enthusiasm, interest, engagement, immersion.

The key is to observe in this moment. It's not so helpful—for the purposes of meditation, though it can be very helpful in daily life—to watch the cause and effect, or the inputs and outputs, actions and results as we're meditating. Not so much to think about the stories of the past or planning for the future, but to look at those interactions as they're happening.

It involves observing the details of the object of attention, like we talked about or I led us through this morning with the meditation on breathing. In that sense it's like that scientist looking at the details of the foliage of this plant on the ground, right? Or like a bird watcher watching the plumage, or the shape, flight, and song of a particular bird species. There's also this benefit to looking at the overall biosphere or ecosystem. How the body and mind are relating to each other in the moment, how the whole system is interacting. "Oh, when I take this longer breath, my back relaxes," or "When I exhale in this way, there's a subtle sense of pleasure in the chest." So, notice these relationships.

There's an art and a science to this, this is the second point. Be creative, be playful, be experimental. At times I think of it as running these little testable experiments, or like an artist mixing different colors on the palette and just seeing how they work, seeing how the brush stroke works. In the moment this can be like fiddling with a recipe, adding a touch of seasoning while cooking, or turning up or down the heat and tasting, noticing the effects.

Many results though, as all of you know by now I'm sure, unfold over time, so patience is really helpful. It's more like that simile of the garden: changing the conditions a little, plowing in a bit more mulch or fertilizer, changing the watering regimen, and noticing the shifts over the days in the plant, and then noticing at the end of the season the difference in the fruits, the yield.

In meditation many of the true benefits take a season or more to ripen. There is though a big place for this more closely related feedback, I guess I'll say, and this is more feedback in the sense of instantaneous or close noticing of results. It's like the action-reflection-action model of learning, and this is used in many fields, including in the spiritual counseling field I do, which is to do something, to reflect on it, and then tweak what you do the next time, and notice the results, reflect on it again.

There's also a real benefit every now and then to just stepping back and looking at the big picture. Whether it's how the practice is affecting the overall mood or tone in mind, heart, and body in the moment in one session, at the end of a session, but also every now and then to look at how focusing, meditation is affecting my life, your life, and adjust course appropriately. I had the great benefit the first year I practiced—I didn't know any better, I didn't know anything was supposed to happen when sitting. So what kept me going was the difference in how I was showing up and experiencing the rest of my life. Huge changes, but they were changes that felt good. More relaxed, a little happier, and more aware.

So in some ways this quality of overall observation, curiosity, interest, and experimentation loops back to apply to all of the other bases that we've talked about this week. Noticing the overall way these bases are developing and how each one is showing up, that is a kind of investigation or interest.

The Buddha made two other overall suggestions. He made a number, but I'm going to focus on two relating to these bases for spiritual power. One is with each quality—desire or Chanda^[4], Viriya or effort, Citta^[5] (the subjective sense of mind-heart), and investigation itself—to notice: is it too slack or too tense? Like tuning that guitar, it should be neither too slack nor too tense, tuning it. And then the other is to have it neither be internally contracted nor externally distracted. So those are two kind of shortcuts you can bring to any quality in meditation really: too tense, too slack? Too constricted or obsessive, too distracted and scattered? Or is it just right, or even in the range of just right?

Each meditation, each process in this journey, each step in this journey of cultivating heart and mind invites us to learn, receive, adapt. I just want to invite you to enjoy it when possible. Be playful or hold it lightly, and to be with it with patience, a sense of connection.

So this is the Iddhipāda, the bases for spiritual power. And I just also want to acknowledge in closing that these teachings tend to emphasize more doing than a lot of mindfulness teachings. So please keep in mind that these doings, these explorations tend to unfold best in a field of relaxation and ease and trust in the process.

May these bases of spiritual power invite you, empower you to deepen and enjoy your practice. Thank you so much, it's been a joy to be with you.